If I wanted to compile my writings into an e-book & market it, what would be the best companies to do it through?
Moved from General Questions to Cafe Society.
samclem, moderator
A coworker has had a good experience publishing his work as a Kindle book (which is free) and it’s not tied down to Kindle owners because Amazon has a Kindle app which allows Kindle publications to be read on smart phones, tablets, computers, etc. They don’t market it for you of course but it will show up in a search of their inventory just like a hardcover book or CD or anything else.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and probably others will all distribute it for you. If you actually want someone to “market” it that’s a different kettle of fish.
We’re actually looking at how to format it- Sorry I wasn’t clearer.
If you use Kindle or Barnes & Noble, a doc in Word format will suffice,
But it won’t look all that great. I know a writer who formats her newsletter for iPads and Kindles… she used Word, but quickly hit its limitations, and ran into a lot of random reformatting. It’s a Word Processing application, not a Page Layout one. She’s now using Adobe InDesign, but it takes some learnin’ to master. So she’s taking a class (…from me).
Will Amazon accept manuscripts in TeX/LaTeX? That’s an even steeper learning curve than something like InDesign, but it’s also free, and will probably stick around longer.